Republican Rep. Mike Coffman’s campaign is going on the offensive and labeling Democratic state Rep. Joe Miklosi as a candidate who backed “$1 billion in tax increases” as a lawmaker.

But the definition of a “tax increase” and which numbers are the fairest to use may be subject to interpretation.

From now until mid-October — when ballots are mailed to voters — Coffman’s campaign will send e-mail blasts that examine Miklosi’s sponsorship and voting record on taxes during his two terms in the state House.

Moreover, officials in Coffman’s campaign have said it’s possible there could be a round of paid advertising in the 6th Congressional District contest — some time between now and Election Day — that assails Miklosi for his voting record.

Up first in what the Coffman campaign is billing as “Joe’s Tax of the Day”: Miklosi’s lone House sponsorship of a 2009 piece of legislation that, in an original draft, would have had Coloradans pay a 6-cent fee on each plastic bag they got while shopping at a store with more than 10,000 square feet and more than $1 million in gross annual sales. In other words, grocery stores and big ol’ box stores, not small businesses.

But the fee was taken out of the bill, which eventually became a measure just to ban the use of plastic bags.

The bill made it through a Senate committee, but eventually died on the Senate floor as a vote was never taken on the measure. If the fee had been passed, it would have brought in up to an estimated $16.3 million a year.

Would-be governor Dan Maes today released more than a dozen pages of his police personnel file that he says validates his story about his time with the Liberal Kansas Police Department a quarter century ago.

Dan Maes in the mid-1980s as a police officer in Liberal, Kansas

While the documents show Maes was part of an ongoing investigation into a small-town gambling ring back in 1985, they also show that he was fired for leaking information about the probe to a relative of a suspected ringleader.

“My only misconduct has been the sharing of the pressures and anxieties of a complex investigation with the most important person in my life which has been loyal to me and my role as a police officer,” Maes wrote in July 1985, pleading for his job. “Neither I nor she have jeopardized any investigation.”

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.